BYRON — Winnebago’s Jeff Swanson didn’t even know how far ahead of the field he was when he hit the back stretch of the 400-meter run during Thursday’s Big Northern Conference track meet.

As long as he was out front, he didn’t care. As it turned out, he was way out front — and on a meet-record pace.

“I could kind of hear them, and I could kind of tell that I was getting some distance in there,” Swanson said after pulling off the impressive 400-200 double-victory. “But, for the most part, I try not to even worry about anybody else. When I’m feeling it, I just have to push myself, and that’s good enough.”

It was Thursday, and his two first-place finishes, his third in the 100 (11.38 seconds), and his effort in the 400-relay team’s second-place performance (44.03) was a big boost to Winnebago’s second-place team finish. Burlington Central won seven events and steamrolled the rest of the competition, hauling in 150 points compared with Winnebago’s 71¼ points and Byron’s 66¼.

But Swanson set a meet record with a 49.55 to blow away the rest of the runners in the 400. He had BC’s Casey Matthews and Harvard’s Christian Kramer on his heels through most of the last turn, but then he found his reserve energy, and that was it.

“One thing I know about myself is,” Swanson added, “if I run my race, I never run out of gas at the end.”

Swanson finished more than 2 1/2 seconds in front of Matthews, and beat the old meet milestone (set by Oregon’s Jordan Thomas in 2009) by a quarter of a second. Later he went out and easily held off Matthews for a 200 victory in 22.14.

Ashton Rutherford provided Oregon with a single highlight, but it was a big one. He curled over the bar at 14 feet, 3 inches to set a new personal best in the pole vault, and at the same time beating everybody else by at least 9 inches. While he came up just short at 14-7, which would’ve been a school record, he gained plenty of confidence heading into next week’s Class 1A sectional meet.

“I felt it today, and I was really hoping I would,” Rutherford said after winning back-to-back BNC pole vault titles. “This is the kind of day I needed, and it was a real boost to come out here and feel so good. Now I have to keep it going.”

North Boone’s Chris Walker won the long jump (20-11) and the triple jump (44-3 1/2) and took third in the high jump (6-1), and in the shot put teammate Nick Krawczyk (47-9) edged out Byron’s Ross Sealby (47-6) as the Vikings took fourth in the team standings (42 points).

Page 2 of 2 - Rockford Christian’s Quinn Halversen was the lone freshman to earn a BNC conference title, helping the Royals into fifth place as a team (41 1/4 points) with a personal-best 6-5 in the high jump.

“This feels better than I ever could have imagined,” Halversen said after re-establishing the school record. “It’s crazy. How do I keep this going, that’s the big question?”